The original CliffsNotes study guides offer expert commentary on major themes, plots, characters, literary devices, and historical background. The latest generation of titles in this series also feature glossaries and visual elements that complement the classic, familiar format. In CliffsNotes on The Odyssey, you follow along on Homer's grand adventure. This epic poem unfurls the story of Odysseus' triumph over Troy and arduous journey home to reclaim his kingdom. At 2,500 years old, it is one of the finest books ever written; as poetry, it sets the standard for comparison; and it serves as one of the foundations of the Western world's cultural heritage. This study guide carries you along on Odysseus' journey by providing summaries and critical analyses of each book. You'll also explore the life and background of the epic, Homer, and gain insight into the Homeric Question. Other features that help you study include Character analyses of major players A character map that graphically illustrates the relationships among the characters Critical essays on the literary devices and major symbols of The Odyssey A review section that tests your knowledge A Resource Center full of books, articles, films, and Internet sites Classic literature or modern modern-day treasure — you'll understand it all with expert information and insight from CliffsNotes study guides.

Penelope has been waiting for her husband Odysseus to return from Troy for many years. Little does she know that his path back to her has been blocked by astonishing and terrifying trials. Will he overcome the hideous monsters, beautiful witches and treacherous seas that confront him? This rich and beautiful adventure story is one of the most influential works of literature in the world.

Fresh from his triumphs in the Trojan War, Odysseus, King of Ithaca, wants nothing more than to return home to his family. Instead, he offends the sea god, Poseidon, who dooms him to years of shipwreck and wandering. Battling man-eating monsters, violent storms, and the supernatural seductions of sirens and sorceresses, Odysseus will need all his strength and cunning--and a little help from Mount Olympus--to make his way home and seize his kingdom from the schemers who seek to wed his queen and usurp his throne. Award-winning graphic artist Gareth Hinds masterfully reinterprets a story of heroism, adventure, and high action that has been told and retold for more than 2,500 years--though never quite like this. With bold imagery and an ear tuned to the music of Homer’s epic poem, Gareth Hinds reinterprets the ancient classic as it’s never been told before.

The Iliad is still the greatest poem about war that our culture has ever produced. For a hundred generations, poets and thinkers in the West have pored over, retold and argued about the events described in this martial epic, even when direct knowledge of it was lost. Various empires have admired it as a book that in telling the story of the siege of Troy also extols the warrior ethic, and teaches the young how to die well.Yet the figure at the heart of the epic, the consummate warrior Achilles, is a brooding, controversial hero. He is a fierce critic of those who have started this war and allowed it to drag on, consuming soldiers and civilians alike. Disconcertingly, The Iliad portrays war as a catastrophe that destroys cities, orphans children and wrecks whole societies.Caroline Alexander's extraordinary book is not about any of the traditional concerns that have occupied classicists for centuries. It is simpler and more radical than that. In her words, 'This book is about what the Iliad is about; this book is about what the Iliad says of war.'

The idea of heroism has become thoroughly muddled today. In contemporary society, any behavior that seems distinctly difficult or unusually impressive is classified as heroic: everyone from firefighters to foster fathers to freedom fighters are our heroes. But what motivates these people to act heroically and what prevents other people from being heroes? In our culture today, what makes one sort of hero appear more heroic than another sort? In order to answer these questions, Ari Kohen turns to classical conceptions of the hero to explain the confusion and to highlight the ways in which distinct heroic categories can be useful at different times. Untangling Heroism argues for the existence of three categories of heroism that can be traced back to the earliest Western literature – the epic poetry of Homer and the dialogues of Plato – and that are complex enough to resonate with us and assist us in thinking about heroism today. Kohen carefully examines the Homeric heroes Achilles and Odysseus and Plato’s Socrates, and then compares the three to each other. He makes clear how and why it is that the other-regarding hero, Socrates, supplanted the battlefield hero, Achilles, and the suffering hero, Odysseus. Finally, he explores in detail four cases of contemporary heroism that highlight Plato’s success. Kohen states that in a post-Socratic world, we have chosen to place a premium on heroes who make other-regarding choices over self-interested ones. He argues that when humans face the fact of their mortality, they are able to think most clearly about the sort of life they want to have lived, and only in doing that does heroic action become a possibility. Kohen’s careful analysis and rethinking of the heroism concept will be relevant to scholars across the disciplines of political science, philosophy, literature, and classics.

'Ulysses' is a novel by Irish writer James Joyce. It was first serialised in parts in the American journal 'The Little Review' from March 1918 to December 1920, and then published in its entirety by Sylvia Beach in February 1922, in Paris. 'Ulysses' has survived bowdlerization, legal action and bitter controversy. Capturing a single day in the life of Dubliner Leopold Bloom, his friends Buck Mulligan and Stephen Dedalus, his wife Molly, and a scintillating cast of supporting characters, Joyce pushes Celtic lyricism and vulgarity to splendid extremes. An undisputed modernist classic, its ceaseless verbal inventiveness and astonishingly wide-ranging allusions confirm its standing as an imperishable monument to the human condition. It takes readers into the inner realms of human consciousness using the interior monologue style that came to be called stream of consciousness. In addition to this psychological characteristic, it gives a realistic portrait of the life of ordinary people living in Dublin, Ireland, on June 16, 1904. The novel was the subject of a famous obscenity trial in 1933, but was found by a U.S. district court in New York to be a work of art. The furor over the novel made Joyce a celebrity. In the long run, the work placed him at the forefront of the modern period of the early 1900s when literary works, primarily in the first two decades, explored interior lives and subjective reality in a new idiom, attempting to probe the human psyche in order to understand the human condition. This richly-allusive novel, revolutionary in its modernistic experimentalism, was hailed as a work of genius by W.B. Yeats, T.S. Eliot and Ernest Hemingway. Scandalously frank, wittily erudite, mercurially eloquent, resourcefully comic and generously humane, 'Ulysses' offers the reader a life-changing experience. Publisher : General Press

Now you can turn every day into a day dedicated to the goddess and your own personal spiritual evolution, when you get The Goddess Companion by Patricia Monaghan. Turn to The Goddess Companion each day for a clearer insight into how the divine flows through your life. This spirit-nourishing collection of 366 authentic goddess prayers, invocations, chants, and songs was culled from dozens of diverse eras and cultures. Each ancient prayer rings out in clear language that maintains the sacred spirit of the originals. ·A different traditional prayer, invocation, or chant to the goddess for each day of the year ·Each is illuminated by readings about the ancient quote that offer rich material for reflection, inspiration, and bliss ·Multiple indices allow you to find information by goddess name, subject, or cultural origin ·Explore the goddess as envisioned by 68 different cultures throughout the ages?including the Americas, classical Greece and Rome, Asia, ancient Sumeria and Babylonia, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa ·Find prayers that encompass nearly 130 aspects of the goddess, from Aida Weydo and Amaterasu to White Buffalo Calf Woman and Zemyna ·Use the perpetual calendar to meditate upon one goddess prayer each day The Goddess Companion does far more than simply give you meditations and prayers. The readings associated with each will give you incredible insights into a wide variety of cultures and, just as importantly, into your very nature. Written by one of the leaders of the contemporary goddess movement, The Goddess Companion will help you on your spiritual path to self-understanding.

This generous abridgement of Stanley Lombardo's translation of the "Odyssey" offers more than half of the epic, including all of its best-known episodes and finest poetry, while providing concise summaries for omitted books and passages. Sheila Murnaghan's Introduction, a shortened version of her essay for the unabridged edition, is ideal for readers new to this remarkable tale of the homecoming of Odysseus.

Odyssey of Your Soul: A Voyage of Self-Discovery is Elizabeth Clare Prophet's insightful interpretation of the rites of passage hidden in one of literature's most popular epic poems, The Odyssey, by Homer. The drama of Odysseus is an inner drama. His relationships and encounters mirror back to him parts of his own character that he must confront. Odyssey of Your Soul is a practical understanding of Homer's Odyssey that directly meets the need for a workable and meaningful spirituality in a world where adults and youth alike are striving to navigate their own unique odyssey.

Available for the first time as an independent work, David Grene’s legendary translation of Oedipus the King renders Sophocles’ Greek into cogent, vivid, and poetic English for a new generation to savor. Over the years, Grene and Lattimore’s Complete Greek Tragedies have been the preferred choice of millions of readers—for personal libraries, individual study, and classroom use. This new, stand-alone edition of Sophocles’ searing tale of jealousy, rage, and revenge will continue the tradition of the University of Chicago Press’s classic series. Praise for David Grene and Richmond Lattimore’s Complete Greek Tragedies “This is it. No qualifications. Go out and buy it everybody.”—Kenneth Rexroth, Nation “The translations deliberately avoid the highly wrought and affectedly poetic; their idiom is contemporary. . . . They have life and speed and suppleness of phrase.”—Times Education Supplement